The Ted Stevens indictment has spurred a round of editorials about ethics in Congress.  The Waco Herald-Tribune weighs in:

Stevens is the latest in a long line of members of Congress who over the years have abused their elected positions.

Former U.S. Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham of California, a Republican like Stevens, now is requesting that President Bush commute his sentence of eight years and four months after his guilty plea for accepting $2.4 million in cash and gifts from defense contractors in exchange for defense contracts.

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat from Louisiana, is awaiting trial on corruption charges. An FBI raid on his house found $90,000 in cash in the freezer with serial numbers that matched serial numbers given by an FBI informant.

In recent days, Jefferson has been linked to another criminal case involving federal money laundering.

The public should be grateful that the FBI and the Justice Department are pursuing cases of corruption in Congress. The public should be worried, however, that such ethics atrocities have become so plentiful.

The public should also be worried that these atrocities aren't dealt with by the House and Senate Ethics Committees.  Members of Congress just don't police themselves.

Acknowledgment -- or spin -- from the top political adviser to George Bush on why Republicans lost the elections in 2006.  Karl Rove places the blame squarely on the GOP's ethical problems according to Robert Novak.  That's quite a statement from someone wrapped up in a major ethics scandal.  Rove was just subpoenaed by the Senate over the U.S. Attorneys scandal:

Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections. 

Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley. In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq.

Today's New York Times has an article about the members (and former members) of Congres currently under federal investigation.

More than a dozen current and former lawmakers are under scrutiny in cases involving their work on Capitol Hill.

And that number may be less extraordinary than the number of separate corruption investigations into which they have been drawn. In earlier Congressional scandals, like those that resulted from the Abscam bribery sting in the 1980s and disclosure of financial abuses at the House post office in the 1990s, several members came under scrutiny together in a single investigation. Now, however, there are several seemingly unrelated criminal inquiries, from here in Washington, where federal prosecutors are continuing to pursue the Abramoff investigation, to Alaska, where two of the three members of that state’s Congressional delegation are being investigated over accusations that they accepted illegal gifts from an oil services company.

In addition, the Times provided this handy chart, which identifies all the members and their related scandals:

The ethics news of the past couple weeks has been tough on the House GOP leadership. There are investigations swirling around several members of the GOP caucus. In the past, the leaders basically ignored the ethical scandals. The Hill reports on the "challenges on ethics" and the "critical test" facing Minority Leader John Boehner:

House Republicans are engaged in a two-front war. One is the public relations battle over how to proceed in Iraq. But even closer to home, they are facing new challenges on ethics—the other major issue that plagued them during the 2006 campaign and lead to the loss of their majority.

Tuesday’s indictments of two allies of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (D-Calif.) on an array of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering charges could ensnare more GOP lawmakers as prosecutors negotiate the terms of their cases. Coupled with new and ongoing Justice Department investigations into the land deals of two other House Republicans from California, Gary Miller and Ken Calvert, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is facing a critical test on how to tackle the ethics front while maintaining a cohesive conference.

The House doesn't have a great history of policing itself on ethics issues. The GOP caucus -- and the Democrats -- will be well-served by a new Office of Public Integrity.

It has been a week of one Executive Branch ethics issue after another. The latest scandal was reported this morning by Associated Press. The top Justice Department environmental official purchased a vacation house with a top oil industry lobbyist -- while that same Justice Department official was overseeing cases involving that same oil industry lobbyist's company:

The inquiry by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was announced hours after The Associated Press reported that the prosecutor, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, bought a $1 million vacation home on Kiawah Island, S.C., with ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald R. Duncan, nine months before agreeing to let the company delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup. It was one of two proposed consent decrees Wooldridge signed with ConocoPhillips just before resigning last month.

"There appears to be a breakdown of ethics at the Justice Department," the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Wednesday night. "Senior Justice Department officials should not be handling cases that affect their close friends and investment partners."

The third buyer of the beachshore getaway was former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, the highest-ranking Bush administration official targeted for criminal prosecution in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.

In one of her last acts, Wooldridge signed proposed consent decrees with ConocoPhillips, one delaying the required installation of $525 million in pollution controls at nine refineries and the other dealing with a Superfund toxic waste cleanup.

Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Fox News (which we learned from the Associated Press) that Republicans paid a price -- "a terrible price" -- in the 2006 elections for the ethics scandals that plagued the party:

Asked about the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, Mrs. Cheney said scandals cost the GOP many votes.

"I think Iraq was part of it, but I also think that you had some extraordinary ethical failures," she said. "They were bipartisan, but I do think the Republicans paid a great price for that."

She noted the cases of former Republican congressman Mark Foley, who resigned over sexually explicit messages sent to male pages, and Randy Cunningham, who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors.

"I think those exacted a terrible price," she said.

Following up on CREW's statement that members of Congress should not oversee the budgets of agencies that are investigating them, The Charleston Daily Mail asks a key question about West Virginia Congressman Alan Mollohan:

How can Congress put in charge of the FBI budget a man who may be under an FBI investigation?

The paper provides context from CREW -- and agrees with our position:

The FBI will not confirm whether it is investigating him. Nonetheless, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi apparently persuaded Mollohan to resign this spring from the House ethics committee when discussion of a possible FBI investigation first came to light.

Now the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling for Mollohan to recuse himself from decisions on the Justice Department budget.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the center, stopped short of calling for Mollohan not to be appointed chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department budget.

But she told the Dominion Post of Morgantown: "The question is whether Justice will be able to vigorously investigate Mr. Mollohan when he is responsible for their budget. Once you're the appropriators, you have a lot of influence over what money goes to a department. I don't see how all that happens objectively."

...Pelosi did the right thing this spring. Now new House Appropriations Chairman David Obey must follow suit by giving Mollohan some budget other than the Justice Department's to oversee.

CREW just issued this statement from Melanie Sloan:

In the November elections, the public clearly indicated that it was fed up with the culture of corruption in Washington. As plans are being made for the new Congress, both political parties should seek to adhere to the highest ethical standards. To that end, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) believes it is imperative that no member under federal investigation be involved in the oversight or appropriations of any agency involved in investigating that member. Because House Appropriations Committee members Alan Mollohan (D-WV), Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) are all under investigation by the Department of Justice, all three men should recuse themselves from participating in the consideration of appropriations to the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The issue of ethics reform is reportedly a top issue for Democrats when they take control of Congress in January. It is still unclear exactly what that means.  What is clear, however, is that the media and the American people are paying attention. Ethics and corruption were very much on the minds of the electorate in 2006. They'll want real reform:

After railing for months against Congressional corruption under Republican rule, Democrats on Capitol Hill are divided on how far their proposed ethics overhaul should go.

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, mindful that voters in the midterm election cited corruption as a major concern, say they are moving quickly to finalize a package of changes for consideration as soon as the new Congress convenes in January.

Their initial proposals, laid out earlier this year, would prohibit members from accepting meals, gifts or travel from lobbyists, require lobbyists to disclose all contacts with lawmakers and bar former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from entering the floor of the chambers or Congressional gymnasiums.

None of the measures would overhaul campaign financing or create an independent ethics watchdog to enforce the rules. Nor would they significantly restrict earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers can anonymously insert into spending bills, which have figured in several recent corruption scandals and attracted criticism from members in both parties. The proposals would require disclosure of the sponsors of some earmarks, but not all.

Some Democrats say their election is a mandate for more sweeping changes, and many newly elected candidates — citing scandals involving several Republican lawmakers last year — made Congressional ethics a major issue during the campaign. After winning the House on election night, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, promised “the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

We'll expect Pelosi to hold to that standard. We'll work with her to make sure that goal can be met. The voters expect nothing less. Same for CREW.

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now facing a second ethics challenge: who will be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.  Pelosi has already nixed Jane Harman.  The next in line is Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) who is also an impeached federal judge:

Pelosi has decided that the ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), won't be getting the chairman's job.

The Congressional Black Caucus is pushing Hastings, but Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas has emerged as the compromise front-runner, several sources said.

If she buckles to pressure from the Black Caucus and awards the prized chair to Hastings, Pelosi will have squandered her credibility on the "culture of corruption" issue she made her trademark in the last campaign.

"It's hard to talk about culture of corruption and how we're going to be the most ethical Congress ever if you don't take everything into account," said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Westchester/Bronx).

Engel's comment seems to indicate that members of the Democratic caucus understand that ethics matter.  Let's hope that translates to the leadership as well.